@Max, you do realise that the use of more than 2 colours (other than black) will automatically preclude the use of the "Ultra macho" tag. as do primary colours and any whose names relate to fruit or vegetation (so plum, berry and fern are out). You might sneak the red and orange through but I'd be wary of the colours on your meter scale.....

Oh, and sorry, I'm an ex-pom living in an ex-pommy colony, so my "colours" has a U in it.....

Try hooking up a high frequency, high voltage, low current power supply to one of the pins of the tube and see if you can make plasma lightning appear in the tube. Might work if there's just enough of the right gasses left in the tube. That would be way cool.

@ChrisJ555: wasn't the original idea that the "masculine" version would be incredibly simple?

You've caught me on the horns of a dilemma (and it's damned uncomfortable, let me tell you). Well, the controls on the man part will certainly be simple -- that wonderful switch that doesn't actually do anything (except maybe trigger a "ripple in the force" and a few appropriate sound effects).

I've decided NOT to use the big tube in my office (it's just too amazing in its transport frame), but I do want to have some tubes on top flickering away with interesting light effects -- I'm going to perform some experiments this weekend -- watch for a follow-up column early next week...

You've definitely got some good ideas that will look cool, but....I don't know, it almost seems like it's getting too complicated. I mean, wasn't the original idea that the "masculine" version would be incredibly simple? Love that switch, though!

@bk11: Assuming the filament in the tube still works, a low voltage supply with sufficient current would light it up. Add PWM control to the supply, and all sorts of effects are possible. If you keep the brightness down, the filament will last nearly forever.

Actually, that's a really good point -- I hadn;t thought about lighting the filament -- but even a dim glow would look rather cool (well, hot :-)